We have had films with decidedly overtones of superficial Marxism typical of the James Cameron Avatar variety; or Titanic, a kind of vampiring of the downtrodden and unwashed in the service of champagne socialism. By the same token, The Dark Knight Rises is being BBQ-d as ideological right-wing capitalism, pro-police powers and social justice scrap heap material for those so inclined to invoke the coming dark age that is upon us. News organization such as Salon and Guardian are exemplar of this sort of soft-Marxism that fuels the dissent industry, a repackaging of the Frankfurt School, Thomas Frank’s The Baffler. It can almost be called the old-line Zionist ideology imbued with universal humanism and the same ugly materialism it seeks to confront. In the end, many of these films are almost Veblen in their use of conspicuous waste; movies costing $250 million while standing against corporate greed, Wall Street, the environment and so on…
( see link at end) That decade, of course, initiated a modern era that now sees multimedia pop culture products serve as a full-on shadow education system — one that still aims to tell young adults how to divide the world between good and evil. That’s why two of this year’s most anticipated pop culture products are so important — they may signal a larger effort to go beyond even the most audacious anti-populism of the 1980s and somehow turn the mass public itself into Public Enemy No. 1….
—All superheroes are black sheep. But the Dark Knight has always been murkier than most. His superpowers are not an accident of birth, or of stumbling into the wrong lab at the wrong time. They’re not powers at all, simply a simulation made possible by good fortune and the leisure that accompanies it. Bruce Wayne can splurge on the kit and cars to set himself up as a crime-fighting Christ substitute, plus power and glitter enough to hide his hobby. He’s always been a curious idol: within aspiration because he’s flesh and blood; beyond it because he’s the lucky recipient of inherited wealth.—Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/jul/17/dark-knight-rises-capitalist-superhero image:http://debelleschoses.com/2012/07/05/le-vin-au-moyen-age-se-raconte-a-la-tour-jean-sans-peur/p1090891/
…There’s a cyclical quality to this, of course. Just as so many 1980s pop culture products reflected the spirit of the Reagan Revolution’s conservative backlash, we are now seeing two blockbuster, genre-shaping products not-so-subtly reflect the Tea Party’s rhetorical backlash to the powerful Occupy Wall Street zeitgeist. In the same way Republican leaders have caricatured the “99 percent” idea as a menacing “attack upon freedom” or a “mob,” “Call of Duty” is essentially equating the “99 percent” idea with terrorism, chaos and violence.
Likewise, in “Dark Knight Rises,” though there has been some effort to use the villain’s name to portray him as a stand-in for Mitt Romney, the Los Angeles Times is right to flag the true “Occupy Wall Street vibe” of the bad guys. And though it’s possible that the film will ultimately provide a more nuanced portrayal of such populist outrage than “Call of Duty” seems intent on presenting, the problem remains the same: when villainous motives and psychopathy is televisually ascribed to mass popular outrage against the economic status quo, it suggests to the audience that only crazy people would sympathize with such outrage….Read More:http://www.salon.com/2012/07/18/batman_hates_the_99_percent/
—Such readings spuriously conflate Occupy Wall Street’s anti-capitalism with the indiscriminate violence used by Bane and his followers.
When Nolan revived the Batman franchise in 2005, the setting – Gotham in the midst of an economic depression – seemed like an anachronistic reference to the superhero’s origins in the 1930s; 2008′s The Dark Knight was too early to register the impact of the financial crisis. But The Dark Knight Rises clearly attempts to respond to the post-2008 situation. The film isn’t the simple conservative parable that rightwingers would like, but it is in the end a reactionary vision.—Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/22/batman-political-right-turn image:http://lanefdesfous.fr/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=59
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